It is indeed difficult after reading this book to assign blame for the state in which the U.S. middle class is languishing without wondering if some of what has happened might have been prevented had so many of us not been on cruise control during the past four decades.

Smith is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former reporter with the New York Times and Emmy award-winning producer and correspondent with PBS, including regular appearances on “Washington Week in Review” and “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.” Here he offers an examination of the socioeconomic tsunami that was set in motion in 1978, laying out the narrative artfully in plain language, each chapter methodically building on the next. Smith's assertion is that the American dream has been dismantled over the course of the past 40 years. His contention throughout this precisely constructed work is that the erosion of the middle class has been effected by the stranglehold corporate interests have on political decision making.